These very small (about eight inches in diameter) bronze medallions were embedded in the ground along an imaginary line over six miles in Paris. Before the agreement to use the Greenwich as the Prime Meridian, the French had their own version, which they gave up on the condition that the meter would be accepted as the universal measurement... Oh well...Cutting through famous sites and many centuries of history, this artwork (Hommage a Arago) creates a path between the north and south borders of the city (on the original axis or meridian which was formalized in 1667 and begins at the Observatoire in the 14th arrondissement). As you can see, the medallions are stamped with directional markers N and S and the name Arago, who was a 19th-century physicist, political reformer, and astronomer who formulated meridian measurements.
Being so small, they are easily missed and stepped on. Only in the past week have I noticed two—one on the boulevard Saint-Germaine and one yesterday in front of Palais Royal; there are actually 135 of these plates. The Dutch artist, Jan Dibbets, challenged the traditional definition of a monument as a statue on a pedestal by making his “monument” non-monumental. Interestingly enough, there used to be a statue of Arago in a small plaza where the meridian of Paris crosses boulevard Arago. However, the statue was melted down for use in World War II armaments just like so many other bronze statues at the time; only an empty pedestal remains. So these little bronze medallions created in 1996 pay homage to Arago by spreading his name all over the city of Paris.
